2nd Edition of the book:
A Resource for Ethics Commission Members, Local Officials,
Attorneys, Journalists, and Students,
And a Manual for Ethics Reform
by Robert Wechsler, Director of Research at City Ethics

The City Ethics Model Code Project is much more than just another model code. The Model Code Project has two goals. One is to educate people about ethics code provisions. Model provisions are explained in comments and linked to related essays. In addition, alternative language is often provided.

This is the fourth of four blog posts on Zephyr
Teachout's excellent new book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to
Citizens United (Harvard Univ. Press).

Extortion and Pay to PlayTeachout talks about the difference in the origins of bribery
and extortion statutes, the first coming out of judicial rules
(bribing judges), the second coming out of rules governing appointed
or employed officials who use their position to require money from
those the official is supposed to serve for free.

It's interesting that one rarely hears the word "extortion" in a
government context anymore. The term "pay to play" covers one form
of extortion, but it certainly seems less judgmental. Pay to play,
because much of it is legal and it is done by elected officials rather than employees, is frowned upon, but often considered
ordinary business, unlike bribery or extortion.

And yet, Teachout notes, extortion was, at first, more likely to be
criminalized "perhaps because the power dynamic of an official
extorting a citizen was more dangerous than a citizen bribing an
official." But Teachout says that from the mid-18th century "the
elements of bribery and extortion were increasingly fused."

This is the third of four blog posts on Zephyr
Teachout's excellent new book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to
Citizens United (Harvard Univ. Press).

Other Anti-Corruption Laws
Teachout is good at presenting laws as anti-corruption laws which
are not usually considered this way. For example, the Seventeenth
Amendment, which provided for the direct election of U.S. senators,
ensured that they were more likely to be independent (at least until campaigns became very expensive). And antitrust
laws were in part an attempt to prevent the creation of the sort of
huge companies that are more easily able to control government
officials. The Takings Clause, as well as the copyright and patents
clause, were "intended as at least a partial limitation on the power
to corruptly sell special property privileges."

We often forget about the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, which required
that congressional salary raises take effect only at the beginning
of the following session. Since politics has been professionalized,
and incumbents tend to be re-elected, this doesn't amount to much
anymore. But legislative salaries are still, along with government
ethics laws, among the few situations where local legislators vote
on matters that apply directly and specially to their personal
interests.

This is the second of four blog posts on Zephyr
Teachout's excellent new book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to
Citizens United (Harvard Univ. Press).

A Culture of Gift Giving
In the book's introduction, Teachout notes that, back in the 18th
century, the idea of elected officials accepting gifts was already
very different in America than it was in Europe. Gifts had "positive
associations of connection and graciousness" in Europe, and
"negative associations of inappropriate attachments and
dependencies" in America. Americans had a more puritanical view of
such gifts as "seductive," "luxurious," and "Old World." Therefore,
all gifts to officials, including diplomats, had to be approved by
Congress, making them public rather than private. The goal was not
to prevent bribery, but rather, as Teachout says, to prevent "a
culture of gift giving." More positively, the goal was to create "an
aristocracy of virtue and talent" instead of an aristocracy of power
and wealth (quoting Gordon S. Wood, Radicalism of the American
Revolution (Knopf, 1992, p. 183)).

But even then, it was hard for officials to reject or disclose
gifts. Teachout tells a story of Thomas Jefferson failure to disclose an
expensive gift from the French king, which ends: "his simultaneous
disdain for European gifts and his inability to resist them
foreshadow a long American practice: our desire to reject and accept
the old practices simultaneously."

This is the first of four blog posts in which I will look at Zephyr
Teachout's excellent new book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to
Citizens United (Harvard Univ. Press), from a government
ethics viewpoint.I
have already reviewed Teachout's seventh chapter (which
appeared separately in draft form), on the history of lobbying
regulation, particularly by courts, and have included a discussion
of it in my
new chapter on Local Lobbying.

The first thing that one should know about the book is that it is
not a history of corruption in the United States, but rather a
history of the idea of corruption in the U.S. Teachout's focus is on
"the anticorruption principle," which she believes was central to
the Founders' vision of the United States, and which has, in recent years,
been lost sight of. Teachout is very passionate about both the
principle and the way the courts have turned their back on it, and
this passion is what makes the book so readable and, even, moving.
Although it is full of history and appraisals of judicial decisions,
it is not just an academic exercise.

The most important thing about this book to government ethics
specialists is that Teachout's discussion of corruption is limited
to influence on government officials via (1) gifts, including
campaign contributions, and (2) lobbying. As she says in the book's
introduction, "There are important areas of corruption law that this
book only lightly touches on, like contracting rules, transparency
laws, [and] state and local government conflict of interest laws
..."

Although this is not a book about the core conflicts of interest
issues or about the conflicts of interest programs, Teachout does
raise a number of issues and ideas that are relevant to all aspects
of government ethics. It is these issues and ideas that my posts
will discuss.

An example I often use for why government ethics laws are only
minimum requirements is that these laws cannot include friendships
or romantic relationships, because these are impossible to define
with any precision. When a relationship is
not included because it is undefinable, this does not mean that one
should not treat this relationship like any other special
relationship and withdraw from matters involving that individual.
One should go beyond the minimum requirements of the law and
withdraw. Or even consider whether it is appropriate to have such a
relationship, any more than it would be to go into business with a
restricted source. It may seem unromantic, but personal
relationships do involve more than love and affection. And the last
thing a local official wants is jokes about how he's "sleeping with" a
contractor, developer, or lobbyist.

In North Carolina, there appear to have been some cases of
legislative aides dating lobbyists. To deal with the problem, a laughably inadequate bipartisan bill was drafted, instead of using the situation as a teaching point
for the idea that ethics laws (in this case, a basic conflict of interest provision's application to special personal relationships) are, unlike most other laws, only
minimum requirements. Here's the draft bill (HB
252):